Project AVATAR a reusable spacecraft project by India
India a budding superpower has already amazed the world with its advancement in space technology.
And now to raise the bar even higher, India is now working on a new benchmark in its space capability. This benchmark is a reusable launch vehicle technology for an unmanned space plane which is a spacecraft that could take off and land like a normal aeroplane. This project was conceptualized by the then prime minister Atal Bihari Bajpai in 1998. Responsibility of this project was given to India's defense research and development organization. The project has been named as Project Avatar as the word Avatar means reincarnation in Sanskrit. This name was chosen for this project because the space plane is supposed to be the reincarnation of modern space shuttles.
Avatar also stands for aerobic vehicle for trans atmospheric hypersonic aerospace transportation. The main aim of this project is low cost military and commercial satellites space launches, development of a liquid air cycle engine a turbo ram jet engine as well as navigation and landing are crucial for the development of Avatar. Liquid air cycle engine capabilities were successfully tested in 2001, this engine collects air in the atmosphere on the way up liquefies it separates the oxygen and stores it on board for subsequent flight beyond the atmosphere.
Unfortunately due to the lack of scramjet navigation and landing capabilities Project Avatar could not proceed further and just when everybody thought project Avatar was closed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to revive this project after 13 years of no major activity and thus the Indian Space Research Organisation was asked to provide DRDO with scramjet navigation and landing technologies as ISRO was working on its own reusable unmanned space plane. This decision gave project Avatar the push it desperately needed.
ISRO successfully tested the scramjet technology on August 28 2016. A scramjet or supersonic combustion ramjet engine is an engine which works only at supersonic speeds. That is when it is traveling at speeds greater than the speed of sound.
Now as soon as ISRO tests the navigation and landing capabilities on its own two staged unmanned reusable launch vehicle, work on project Avatar finally resumed which happened in 2015. When completed Avatar will be able to carry payloads weighing up to one tonne to low Earth orbit and will be able to withstand up to 100 launches and re-entry.
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